The Numbers Are In: 2014 in Reading Stats

I use this spreadsheet to track my reading (the first tab is where I input all data; the second tab contains all calculations). Feel free to grab it for yourself if you're interested in tracking your own reading stats; I'm happy to help adjust formulas or answer questions if I can!

I love seeing stats from someone who has kept track for several years, it's always so interesting to me! I totally get the love for podcasts...I think they're the main reason I don't really listen to audiobooks much at all.

Thanks! I had fun playing with it. The tricky part about formulas for the spreadsheet is that you (as with all data) have to make sure the data going IN is just so so that the formulas are counting the right things. This was my 4th year with this spreadsheet and it has evolved so much over time... definitely a work in progress still.

I hadn't compared year to year before last year (partially because I kept shifting what I was tracking), but I do think it is interesting to see. Last year, for example, was a really big year for big books for me (20 books over 500 pages, which explains why I read 20 less books last year but ~4,000 more pages).

Oh yeah, the podcasts have totally captured my attention. That and I now work from home, so my daily 30-60 minutes in the car is no longer (something for which I am eternally grateful, but it does diminish my listening time). I still have 1-2x week trips into Baltimore and/or DC, so tend to catch up on audio then, but have found that I prefer shorter formats (like podcasts) for road trips. Makes the time pass more quickly!

Whoa. Where did you get all of your graphs and whatnot? That is so cool!

I'm seeing a lot of bloggers give some screen time to diversity this year. Even with my concerted effort and my expanded definition (authors OR main character of color, authors OR main characters who are LGBT, authors OR main characters who are differently abled), I was only around 30% diverse in my reading. But at least we're all having the dialogue with ourselves and with each other, which is a great place to start!

I've never used infogra.m before, how do you get the data into the cool graphs that you did? I tried lookin up how-tos online but none really answered my qs. Up until now I've just been using goodreads to keep track of rough categories of pages read and genres/series/fic/nfic and such. Tedius to enter!

I keep track of all of my stats in a spreadsheet each year (nerd, I know, but I love it!), and then input the data in Infogr.am (an online infographic tool), which builds the graphs. It's actually pretty simple!

I think you're right about the importance of the dialogue. I used to do a lot of work in the energy efficiency space, and there are myriad studies proving that just benchmarking energy use in a building or home results in reduced usage over time. I think just looking at the basic info on diversity is a big first step for readers and reviewers (and publishers and booksellers, etc.) and the conversation can go from there.

It's pretty easy in Infogram--you select what type of graph or chart you want, and then when you click on it, it opens the data fields. You can just replace the sample data and fields with your own!

I'm not wild about Goodreads stats functionality (or at least, I wasn't three years ago when I first started my own spreadsheet); I just use the social portion of Goodreads to see what others in my network are reading and what they want to read, and track the stats myself.